The Case for Order Operations: From Ad-Hoc to Purpose-Built

Ecommmerce Order Operations is nothing new. The process of breaking down incoming orders, getting them into fulfillment, delivering to delighted customers, processing returns, updating inventory, reconciling financials…it’s all just another day in the life of an ecommerce operations team.

They make it look easy, but in reality Order Ops is complicated work. More so because nearly every step of the process requires working with specific applications: shopping carts, marketplaces, warehouse management systems, ERP, EDI, reporting tools, and more. Each app in the chain has its own features, data, and sometimes frustrating idiosyncrasies.

The key challenge that Order Operations addresses is moving data quickly and reliably across these myriad applications—from order to fulfillment to delivery and back again. Order Ops deals with the horizontal integration problems that exist across applications, not the vertical functions that each specific application handles.

Complications multiply as the merchant’s business expands into more channels. With omnichannel operations, automation goes from a nice-to-have to a must-have. The gaps between applications become too great, the order volumes too large or too varied, manual processing is impossible. But how best to automate?

Many ecommerce businesses are finding that their old ad-hoc order operations solutions just aren’t able to keep up. Slow, unreliable, too expensive to maintain, inflexible, unmanageable… these complaints are becoming increasingly common among ecommerce operations leaders.

Fortunately, a new generation of solutions purpose-built for order operations is emerging. These SaaS applications are more intelligent and more powerful than the ad-hoc solutions of the past, while being much easier to implement. They provide the necessary ingredients to completely automate order-to-fulfillment workflows, regardless of the number of channels or order volume. They give the operations team control over omnichannel order flows and real-time visibility across their applications.

This new infographic lays out the case for a fresh look at OrderOps, while along the way we pick-pack-and-ship our best-selling rubber duckies!

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